Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a routing protocol that is widely used all over the world. Particularly, BGP is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems on the Internet. Typically, BGP makes routing decisions based on paths, network policies, or rule-sets configured by a network administrator.
A route reflector is a network routing component that acts as a focal point for a BGP network. In other words, the utilization of a route reflector allows BGP routers to peer with a central point (a route reflector) rather than peering with each BGP router in the BGP mesh. However, due to route reflectors being central points in BGP networks, a route reflector represents a single point of a failure, which may lead to issues. Therefore, if a route reflector fails, forwarding is lost to all containers whose routes are advertised through the route reflector until another route reflector is provisioned, and all relevant BGP routers are re-provisioned to peer with the new route reflector. A solution to this issue can help prevent these forwarding losses.